Nigeria: music of the North and South

When the Cameroonian-Nigerian singer Prince Nico Mbarga recorded Sweet Mother in 1976, he launched the best-selling song in Africa, selling more than 16m copies from Dakar to Nairobi. Supported by western record companies such as EMI and CBS, through their African subsidiaries in Lagos, Nigerian music was at the peak of its popularity.

Studios and record factories turned out hundreds of 45s and LPs that were exported throughout the region. There were clubs everywhere. And following pioneers such as James Brown, western musicians - from Paul McCartney and Wings (who arrived to record their classic Band on the Run) to America’s Mike Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) - came for the atmosphere of Africa’s grooviest city. What they heard was Afrobeat, popularised by Fela Ransome Kuti, the first African star to benefit from decent international distribution of his music (1).

Fela was Africa’s Bob Marley, bane of the military and the big-business oligarchy. The “man who keeps death in his pouch”, as he renamed himself, hit the market with long hypnotic pieces denouncing Nigerian society, at that time flush with the oil boom. Behind him were dozens of groups and artists who had been raised since the 60s on Roberta Flack and apala rhythms, Ike and Tina Turner and highlife, the Beatles and ju-ju. They all had dreams of making it internationally: the Sahara All Star Band, the Funkees, Lijadu Sisters, The Doves, Cloud Seven, Semi-Colon etc.

But the hopes were short-lived. Immediately after Festac 77 - the second festival of African arts organised in Lagos, where African musicians such as Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz rubbed shoulders with Gilberto Gil (Brazil) and Stevie Wonder (United States) - EMI’s international management took a decision: to shut down their investment as quickly as possible. The reason, as Richard Wells, then EMI’s regional manager in West Africa, explained, was that they couldn’t collect the royalties generated by the sales, and (...)

(7) In an African first, a Nigerian American is the artistic director of the prestigious Documenta 11 contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany - Okwui Enwezor, director of the Journal of Contemporary African Art (Ithaca, NY).

(8) Like the team from the French Comet label, which has relaunched the career of Tony Allen, formerly drummer with Fela.

(9) These include: promoting the export of Nigerian music, pulling in more private investment, creating a Nigerian Hall of Fame to recognise the contributions of major national artists, and improving the legislative framework covering music and the status of Nigerian musicians.

(10) The Guardian, 13 March 2002. Lasode, a longstanding notable of the Nigerian diaspora in the US, is a radio and TV producer who was involved, among other things, in the rehabilitation of the mythical Apollo Theatre of New York, and the Harlem renaissance.